07-15-2019, 07:56 AM
(07-12-2019, 08:00 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Carter wasn't wrong about the fact that the time was shitty. His problem: He had no clue how to solve it.
The Reagan solution was to reduce expectations among the young by gutting the welfare system and promoting low-paying jobs especially in restaurants and stores, and then to ensure that any gains from technological change and greater efficiency go to the Master Class. This way, cheap labor prevents inflation and ensures that the economic order has the best store clerks and restaurant staff available -- on the cheap. Those already doing well were not obliged to sacrifice, but the young adults would see limited opportunity and abysmal pay. Meanwhile the tax cuts rewarded the very rich for further concentrating just about every industry and the bureaucratic elites in Big Business for drawing great pay for treating workers badly.
Donald Trump replaces the folksiness and faux naivete of Reagan with a celebration of his depraved self, and he turns a promotion of plutocracy into a celebration of depravity.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.